Taste, feel, smell.

In theHerbal Experience Region, vacationers experience nature between the Loisach and Isar rivers with all their senses.

The hunt is on. Andrea Winkler marches ahead, equipped with a backpack for the prey. She concentrates on picking up the scent, all her senses are on alert. Because that's the only way to bring home a rich catch on a wild herb hike in the dandelion spring of Tölzer Land.

A few years ago, herbalist Andrea Winkler turned her hobby into her profession. As soon as the first buds venture out of the ground, she and her colleagues are out in the green tasting, smelling, feeling - together with quite a few gatherers and hunters who want to discover the wild roots of the region on the pebble beaches of the rivers, in the riparian forests and on the dry meadows. Everyone is gripped by hunting fever - and almost everyone comes back, like the two Munich residents Iris and Heinz, who want to refine their cuisine, or the farmer's wife Magda, who wants to offer her own herbal soap in the farm store. And some newly arrived vacationers with a desire for air and fragrance are also there.

If you want, you can hike through the quiet forests of the Tölzer Moränengebiet into the enchanted Ellbachmoor, where you can discover Ice Age relics such as gentian, troll flower and wild heather. More sporty in step and with clearly faster breath it goes with the Nordic Walking program for beginners and advanced through the most beautiful dandelion meadows. Or how about a bike tour around Kochel? In the face of Jochberg and Herzogstand, the path winds through the gentle moorland past Benediktbeuern Monastery.

One of the oldest monasteries in Bavaria is home to a centuries-old herbal recipe. Today, the whole region revolves around the spicy little plants: From the Herbal Experience Park in Bad Heilbrunn, which provides information about customs, healing power and growth with guided tours, courses and lectures, and incidentally offers a wonderful space for relaxation and meditation, to the rural Kräuterstüberl in Wackersberg, where visitors are always pampered on Saturdays with the finest herbal creations, to the Gundermann Academy in Bad Heilbrunn, which imparts age-old knowledge about native herbs and their biological connections. Since 2002, almost 40 farmers' wives have trained as certified herbal educators, developed an extensive range of offers and thus helped shape the herbal experience region.

The Tölzer country unites everything, which is so typical for the Bavarian Voralpenland: Nature, tradition, a sense of home and a landscape whose beauty and colors already inspired the famous expressionist painter Franz Marc, who settled in Kochel and whose works can be admired in the Franz Marc Museum located there. Countless paths wind along the river valleys of Loisach, Isar and Jachen and up into the flanks of Brauneck and Herzogstand. Those who want to - almost - "outrun themselves" on the descent can try it out on the Blomberg with a slide on the summer toboggan run or on Lenggries' local mountain Brauneck on the Jaudenhangflitzer. Only in June, when the last dandelion has turned into a dandelion, is it time for the dandelion spring. But until then, Andrea Winkler and all the guests and children have determined anew every day whether they are angels or boys - as revealed by a small black dot on the blown-out flower.